


swiss army man

by wajjs



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Light Angst, so light you can barely tell it's there, this one is a weird one pals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23683471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wajjs/pseuds/wajjs
Summary: How many uses does a corpse have?How many more one that walks?
Relationships: Batfamily Members & Jason Todd
Comments: 2
Kudos: 123





	swiss army man

**Author's Note:**

> i remembered the movie "swiss army man", how weird it is and how much i love inflicting it onto my unsuspecting friends, and i thought "hey! you could make a fic out of this!"
> 
> which. sorta.
> 
> also i am taking as part of my personal canon the "debilitating bone spur in his hip joint" that jason's got going on in detective comics #968 (i am throwing out all the rest)

**swiss army man**

_ How many uses does a corpse have? _

_How many more one that_ walks?

Pushing out the smoke from his lungs, tasting it in his mouth, the willingness through which he does it, it all amounts to nothing but his own amusement. Like training yourself into developing immunity to certain poisons, like reclaiming the deadly and making it your thing. Of course, that is not his brand, he’s hardly the first one to ever do that, but he’s still one of its current main representatives with a nice see-you-whenever card to lady death.

The next exhale is not as smooth because even his air is ashamed of himself and his thoughts. 

The piece of tech, small and inconspicuous, crackles to life atop the table next to him, voices can be heard, his side remains silent. With no rush from his blood and no spike in the rhythm of his heartbeat, he sets out into the night, only an itch rattling inside his chest. Here be ghosts of the drummer kid his heart once was. Here be ghosts coating everything with stillness.

He's a damn good haunting, alright.

When he bleeds, he never bleeds out.

The scar across his neck is gnarly and ugly, a beast of a memorial. He stares at it every morning and every evening, upper lip tugging upwards with a grunt in the biggest display of emotion he puts on when he's alone. Of course, there are other scars, a three point letter shaped one across his torso, the one crossing his shoulder, the one along his thigh; there are other scars, a tad too many, from all his living in his time of the grave.

Scars green water didn't wash away; sentient with all the souls wasted in it, they chose to leave all of them, as if saying  _ hey kid, you're a fucked up abomination, we are never letting you forget. _

He doesn't undress in front of others. When he's in caves with too much high end technology in them, he plays the part of untouchable soldier, keeps every single layer of clothing, bandages and armor on himself. He doesn't undress in front of himself, either. He does so in the dark, when he can't see.

He inhales long and deep and exhales just like that. Lets the smoke out, feels it seizing his lungs and throat. The cheap brand just makes it all the more awful, this side of just how he likes it. All yellowing and toxic. All twisted and wrong.

He pays half a mind to bird number one going on and on about how this is an unnecessary risk. A suicide mission. A wrong that never makes a right. With a smile he puts out the lit end on the sole of his boot, strides forward, snatches the flash drive and tucks it safely in a hidden pocket.

"I got it, girls, don't get your panties all knotted up."

"Jason," Dick's voice has that quality it always gets when he's mixing the following states of being: frustrated, sleep deprived, so angry he's gonna make twenty mistakes (on purpose) on his way back home. "This is not a joke."

"Precisely, dickwand," he hops on his bike, secures his helmet before offering a half-hearted salute, "and what a luck I'm not joking either."

Something goes funny in his hip, making him lose strength in his kicks and precision in his running. The funny expands to his lower back and waist as he beats a hasty retreat, spine screaming in agony and air faulty in his chest.

As he hits the gas and launches off into the night and the inky roads, he has the delirious thought that maybe he's rotting from the inside out. The corpse winning over the living. Maybe it's time going tik tik tok tik. It surely isn't his blood, that fucker doesn't know what rushing means, so there's not a loud singing in his veins.

He still gets what he came here for, delivers it, gets high on the surprised looks they give him. He doesn't say it's easy to face suicide missions when bleeding out is a slow process. These are the good uses of being a walking dead.

But the funny thing keeps growing. It's never still and never quiet. Painkillers do nothing, not even if he'd even take them, and warm showers don't really help. It's a nasty inconvenience leaving him off center and limping on the particularly humid days. It's a big ole sign taped to his back with  _ kick me _ written in crude handwriting.

He keeps going because he's nothing if not a stubborn bastard (in the literal meaning of the word). The helmet helps hide the way his face twists when he lands wrong and agony nails him from his hip up his spine. There is not much he can do about the way his hands have started to shake. It's only a little, but it's true, and he's never hated quite this much his condition until now.

Robin looks at him oddly, lips set in a firm line. He wants to ask the kid to cut him some slack but that's humiliating.

"Don't lag behind," the brat says which is a mile into the 'you're making me worry' territory.

"Dump me right here if I do," he goes for cheeky, has to bite his tongue to hide his wince when he starts walking. Because he's hell of a good method actor, his stride isn't strained. He should look into going for a theatre career.

_ You are cold, _ a voice in his head that sounds like an unholy mixture of Talia and Catherine resonates at seven a.m. when he's just fallen onto his lumpy bed.  _ You are horribly cold, and you're only getting colder. _

"I know," he speaks through numb lips, eyelids fluttering shut. "I'll worry about it when I wake up."

_ Do you have that time? Do you have that luxury? _

He hums, burrows into an old blanket and feels nothing.

_ Are pride and denial going to be your undoing? _

"That surprise' ya?"

And so he falls: both asleep and apart.

To make up for his shaky aim, he goes for larger targets. Kneecaps are a hit or miss of around four out of ten but thighs are all the rage. And shoulders. _Oh yeah._

He keeps his gloves on, his jacket on, his armor on. Tenses and moves away whenever either a bird or a bat tries to get close enough to touch. This is making him rediscover what being truly slippery is.

The panicked silence is the only thing that clues him in when things go a bit ass up after an explosion. He looks up from his guns that he just finished holstering to find everyone (yes,  _ even _ the big boob himself) starting at him. Being all eerily still.

"So, uh," Steph is the one to take one for the team and bite the rotten apple, "don't move?"

"Why? What? I'm not going to shoot you-"

"Ja- Hood," Dick sounds a little faint, stretched a smidge too thin, "you have a metal bar sticking out of your shoulder."

Should he be able to feel it?

He doesn't feel it.

He's only sore and tired.

"Huh," he says, eloquently, lets himself be taken to the cave because he's smart enough to recognize a lost battle when he sees one.

It's been good while it lasted. He's had a good enough time.

Body temperature? Wrong.

Pulse? Wrong.

Blood pressure? Wrong.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Bruce looks at him like he's an unknown piece to some unknown game. Or maybe that's not it and what Jason sees is  _ grief. _ It's undecided. How's he supposed to know? (He knows).

His scars are out for them to see and he's never been any more of an outlier. A buzzing billboard detailing why he doesn't belong.

"Look on the bright side of this," he smiles softly, his spine feels acutely of thousands of millions of tiny little needless digging deep deep deep into his muscles and bones. "You've got a zombie on your side. And I don't even come with a craving for brains. It's a one of a kind deal."

Surprisingly, that doesn't make anyone laugh. 

This will take some time to get used to.

For them. Not for him, of course.

**Author's Note:**

> swiss army man or the case of the multitool corpse
> 
> also known as "i guess i've gone from angst writer to weird writer now"


End file.
